If you dig into the demographics of approval/disapproval on the health care question, some interesting trends emerge…

As expected, those who have health care don’t like reform. Because it won’t mean much for them and Dems haven’t made a compelling case that it will drive down their premiums. Well, not yet anyway. However, those who don’t have coverage, well, they’re head over heels. And those on Medicare, well, they’re close to being neutral. Because they already have government run health care and this won’t change things much either.

Next up…income. I find this one particularly interesting since those who make over $75K only have a net -8 disapproval, while those who make between $50 and $75K have -19 disapproval. Maybe this is where most small business owners fall? And, obviously those who are in a lower income bracket love that they’ll be able to afford health care.

The age demos are the most telling, especially when you’re looking at the long term viability of this program. 18 to 34 have a positive view of it, while all others don’t. It’s definitely harder to get that younger generation out to the polls, so 2010 might not turn out well for the Dems, but in the long term this could be huge for them.

This is what happens when you have too many whitecastle munchies? Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?

The most interesting thing to me is that folks in the 20-50k bracket are not more positive. Maybe this his group has the least spare time available to learn about the details, and is most easily swayed by whatever the general buzz is.

There are (at least) two kinds of people who think it’s a bad thing: those on the right who think it was too much and those on the left who think it didn’t go far enough. The poll doesn’t discriminate between them. I’d guess there are far more of the former than of the latter, but that’s a guess. I’d be curious to know and see where they lie within the income and age groups.

I agree with WHQ, although I find it hard to believe that those who thought it was not enough (e.g. didn’t include universal healthcare) would say that the passed health care reform bill was a bad thing. Nevertheless, a poll that wants to be taken seriously should try to expand a bit more to differentiate these obvious groups.

Oh, and I’d just like to say that I am very happy to have found this site where smart, well-opinionated people discuss current events and other social issues in an intelligent and polite manner. I personally enjoyed the discussion about polygamy. I just wrote a paper titled “Can Polygamy jump the Homosexual Marriage Bandwagon? How Utilitarianism can help” so it was fun identifying those that fall under that moral philosophy.

Because I look at the Tea Parties and I see poor white people. Lots and lots of poor white people.

This is born out by the actions of elected officials. Officials in poor states are forced to justify not suing to stop HCR, while officials in Oregon (a fairly rich state) are suing to stop the lawsuits.

And your analogy is pretty stupid. Subsidies are paid for by taxes. Rich people pay the exact same price for healthcare anyone else does. Not a penny more. And they pay less then they would have otherwise, because the bill includes cost controls.

They also pay more in taxes, for a program they may not support, but that happens to everybody. I, for example, just paid for an extremely stupid war that I opposed.

republicans had a long time to deal with this issue now they want to take Obama down with it. If you cant do it better, you should not use it as a tit for tat platform

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